Omigod - Paul Wolfowitz screwed the pooch!!!

Speaking at the National Press Club on December 7, Wolfy confirmed that everything in the Downing Street Memos is true!!!!!!

"If somebody could have given you a Lloyds of London guarantee that weapons of mass destruction would not possibly be used, one would have contemplated much more support for internal Iraqi opposition and not having the United States take the job on the way we did."

What was "the job"? Ousting Saddam - a.k.a. "regime change"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bush's goal was never to "disarm" Saddam, as he insisted repeatedly before the war. Wolfy's answer makes it clear that Bush was determined to overthrow Saddam whether or not he had WMD's.

Remember the famous quote from the Downing Street Memos:

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

In his pre-war sales pitches, Bush always denied that his goal was to oust Saddam. When pressed, he always said the goal was to "disarm" Iraq, and implied Saddam could stay in power if he complied fully with the U.N. weapons inspectors.

(Of course, when Saddam did comply fully - giving inspectors unconditional access to presidential palaces and military sites, destroying short-range missiles that exceeded the permitted range, and submitting a disk with all of its relevant documents - Bush's plan was screwed, as Bob Parry recently reported in detail. So Bush and Blair just blew off the U.N. - and world public opinion - and invaded Iraq anyway.)

(We also know that Saddam agreed to go into exile in February 2003 to avoid an invasion in a deal with former UAE president Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. While the Arab League formally scuttled the deal, we do not yet know whether the Bush administration was behind the scuttling. This would have been the work of the White House Iraq Group, whose records are being sought by Congressional Democrats.)

After the Memos were published on May 1, 2005, Democrats.com offered a $1,000 reward to any reporter who could get Bush to say whether or not the Memos were true. On June 7, when Blair was visiting Bush, AP's Steve Holland asked Bush the question that was on everyone's mind (although he insisted he was unaware of the Democrats.com reward). Bush insisted that he absolutely had not made up his mind to invade Iraq at the time of the memos (spring and fall 2002).

And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth.

My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently, that took place in London happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- look, both us of didn't want to use our military.

Why didn't Bush say his simple goal was to get rid of Saddam - and why did he deny it when he was asked, both before and after the war?

Because invading Iraq simply to oust its leader was strictly illegal under international law, including the U.N. Charter that was written by the U.S. As the preamble begins:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

* to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and...

* to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest,

From Chapter I, Article 2, Section 3:

All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

While the Busheviks didn't give a shit about international law, Blair's inner circle certainly did - as the Downing Street Memos made clear. On March 8, 2002, the Overseas and Defence Secretariat wrote:

A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to Law Officers advice, none currently exists. This makes moving quickly to invade legally very difficult... Of itself, REGIME CHANGE has no basis in international law.

On March 25, 2002, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote:

9 Legally there are two potential elephant traps:
(i) regime change per se is no justification for military action; it could form part of the method of any strategy, but not a goal. Of course, we may want credibly to assert that regime change is an essential part of the strategy by which we have to achieve our ends - that of the elimination of Iraq's WMD capacity; but the latter has to be the goal;

On July 21 2005, a Cabinet Office Briefing Paper read,

US views of international law vary from that of the UK and the international community. Regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law.

On July 23, 2005, the minutes of Blair's cabinet meeting read once again:

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action.

As a result of Wolfy's statement, Tony Blair and his cabinet are in big trouble. Britain - unlike the U.S. - is a party to the International Criminal Court, so Blair and his cronies can be tried for war crimes. The penultimate war crime under the Nuremberg Principles is starting an unprovoked war of aggression.

Principle VI. The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

Blair's government is already in court, trying to stop a lawsuit by Rose Gentle and Military Families Against the War demanding an independent inquiry of the legality of the war.

And ultimately, if international law has any meaning whatsoever, George Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, and the rest of this criminal gang will be held accountable for their war crimes.

Updates: Read other perspectives on Wolfy's remarks by Judd Legum and Dana Milbank.